


A Dream Come True

by Km2c



Category: Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Angst, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-14
Updated: 2014-10-14
Packaged: 2018-02-21 04:50:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2455349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Km2c/pseuds/Km2c
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Edmund reflects on his past choices and his son’s future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Dream Come True

York, 1878

_"Will struck her, knocking her to the ground and covering her with his body as the automaton blew apart like an exploding star."_

Elsewhere, Edmund Herondale woke with a start. He was hot and shaky. The sheets were damp with his sweat and had twisted around his ankles and torso. Panicked, he began to yank at them, feeling like he had just been hugged by a giant octopus. He managed to disentangle himself and half fell out of the bed. The window was open and a cool breeze rolled in. Edmund was glad for the coolness on his burning skin. He staggered over to the window. The room spun around him and his stomach rolled with nausea.

“Get a grip, damn it,” he scolded himself. Remembering he was not alone in the room he glanced back to the bed. Linette was sleeping soundly, still out cold from crying herself to sleep earlier. The guilt nearly ate him alive then and he dragged himself out of the room and the house as quietly as he could manage. His lungs felt like giving out on him and he greedily sucked in the chilly night air once he was outside. The fever dreams were getting worse it seemed. He had had them for months now, but no amount of exhaustion – or alcohol – seemed to help. They came again and again and they were always about…

“Will,” he mumbled. He had dreamed about his son, his baby boy. His heart felt like it might implode at any given moment. He leaned his head against the stone wall of the coach house, fighting back tears as he concentrated on the light of the pale moon lurking over the hills. Oh how he was yearning to have him back! They all were. Linette cried almost every night, praying for her little fach to come home. Cecily cried as well, even though she denied it. She was a tough little thing, his rock in the sea, the reason he lived for. His little surprise. He weakly smiled at the memory of Linette announcing her third pregnancy. Now, Ella and Will he had been prepared for, but his youngest had been a surprising gift indeed. Though that wasn’t the entire truth; he had been prepared for Will and Will only. When his wife had first told him she was expecting a child, he had been so sure it would be a boy…

He then remembered another dream, another night that had changed his life.

London, 1857

Edmund had been hopelessly confused. Why oh why did he have to fall for a mundane of all things? He was a shadowhunter and shadowhunters were forbidden by law to marry mundanes. It weakened the blood, the elders said. Edmund had always thought it rubbish. If shadowhunter blood was dominant, then why worry? He didn’t get it. And if loving her was wrong, then why did it feel so right? His heart stuttered in his chest when he merely thought about her. Those breathtaking dark blue orbs and that black hair… the way she smiled, the way she had tried to protect her abigail, hitting an Eidolon over the head with her bonnet (he still grinned about that). She hadn’t been impressed with him at first either, had gone so far as insulting him, even if she had apologized for it. She was unlike any other girl he had met. Not silly and giggling and flirtatious but headstrong, brave, independent and smart with an air of power around her. She was used to people doing her bidding and meeting her demands, not taking no for an answer and not letting any man tell her what to do. Edmund sighed for what felt like the umpteenth time. The Clave would never agree. Granville would disown him. No, he had to get her out of his head. There was no future for a shadowhunter that dallied with mundanes. Unless she chose to ascend and he could never ask that of her. “Raziel, if you can hear me, please send me a sign, I don’t know what am I supposed to do.” He turned and tossed in his bed, finally falling into a fitful sleep.

_He was standing in Westminster Abbey, in a hurry to attend the next Council meeting. Edmund was about to step out into the East Cloister to get to the Pyx Chamber, when he noticed a dark little shape between two monuments. He paused, squinting to make out more details. As the shape moved forward, the light from the rose window fell on it, illuminating its features. It was a beautiful little boy, with black curling hair and dark blue eyes the color of the stained glass above him. He smiled like an angel and stretched out one little hand to him. “Come home Papa.”_

_Puzzled, Edmund looked around, but there was no one in the Abbey but the two of them. “I…”_

_“Edmund? Where are you? We haven’t got all day boy, let’s get to the meeting,” he heard Granville call him from somewhere._

_The little boy now stretched out both arms in a matter of wanting to be picked up. “Come home.”_

_The young shadowhunter blinked and involuntary took a few steps toward the child. Was he Linette’s son? He shook his head. “You must have mistaken me. I’m not your father.”_

_“Of course you are, silly,” the boy giggled._

_“Edmund!” Granville was calling him again. Golly, that man was impatient. Edmund rolled his eyes and turned towards the direction the voice came from, only to be stopped again._

_“Papa?” The sudden fear in the child’s voice made him turn around again only to draw a sharp intake of breath. The boy looked fearfully towards the shadows he had emerged from. They were moving, growing, slowly spreading and swallowing up the light. They were almost at the child’s little feet. “Papa?!”_

_That did it. Edmund crossed the distance between them in two long strides, scooping the kid up and backing away from the darkness as fast as possible. He felt little arms wrap around his neck and glanced at the trembling figure in his arms. Large dark blue eyes bore into his. The resemblance to Linette really was unmistakable. “Papa? Can we go home please?” One tiny hand had let go of his neck and came to rest against his cheek. He caught it between his own fingers, noticing a ring the size of a button at the child’s index finger. The sight of that ring knocked the breath right out of him. It was the Herondale family ring! He locked gazes with his little angel._

_“Yes,” he found himself saying. “Yes, we can go home now.”_

_He got an unsure smile in return and a flinch when the room dimmed even more. “Shhh, it’s alright,” he hushed his boy; rocking him in his arms. “Everything’s going to be alright. I’ve got you. You are safe now. I won’t let anything happen to you.”_

_Somewhere a door slammed shut._

_“I love you Papa.”_

York, 1878

Edmund had never been able to forget that dream. It had made up his mind about marrying Linette anyway. After they had stripped him of his marks and he had lain prone in her arms, hearing her softly spoken plans for their future together, their wedding, their children, he had believed her. He had known she would carry his child, he just didn’t expect it to be a girl. She had laughed a great deal about his dumb founded expression. He had been so sure it would be the boy he had seen in that dream, but the angel had been generous and granted him a daughter as well. He had been happy of course. Ella was such a sweet angel and she fit perfectly into his arms. Still, the thought of his son had always been there, lurking in the back of his mind, waiting. When Will had been born and the midwife had placed the tiny bundle of life in his arms, he had felt vindicated. The fuzz of raven hair, the dark blue eyes blinking up at him curiously… Will had been his dream come true - literally. The older he got, the more he looked like the child in his dream. By the time he was 7 years old, Edmund had been convinced that the angel had answered his prayer for guidance and sent him a vision of what was to come and, in his opinion, his consent with him quitting his shadowhunter duty. If only he had taken the darkness threatening to swallow his son just as seriously. He couldn’t shake the icy feeling in his stomach that something was wrong. “Please be alright,” he whispered. He had not prayed to the angel in years, but now he found himself reaching out. “Raziel, if you can hear me, please watch over my son. Please let him be alright. Let him come home.”

There was no answer of course, but months later, the maid would come running into the parlor, babbling about a miracle and how he and Linette needed to come see this for themselves. Months later, Cecily would stand in front of his door after having run away as well, with none other than her brother in tow. Months later, he would finally be able to hold his baby boy again, to have him back for one precious hour.

Edmund knew none of that then. He slowly rose and made his way back inside to his wife and youngest daughter, the only people he believed he had left.


End file.
